


The Sound of Silence in the Ring

by Cartadwarfwithaheartofgold (manka)



Series: All the Stars Lead Me to You: One-shots from the Issala Adaar/Josephine Monitiliyet Romance [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Amputation, Amputee, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Injury Recovery, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:07:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26187703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manka/pseuds/Cartadwarfwithaheartofgold
Summary: Issala Adaar struggles to find a new path as she faces the loss of her arm. While practicing with Rylen, she's hit by a silence that means she finally has to listen to Josephine.
Relationships: Female Adaar/Josephine Montilyet, Female Inquisitor/Josephine Montilyet, Issala Adaar/Josephine Montiliyet
Series: All the Stars Lead Me to You: One-shots from the Issala Adaar/Josephine Monitiliyet Romance [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1896808
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	The Sound of Silence in the Ring

Josephine couldn’t bear to watch. 

And she couldn’t bear to look away. 

Issala heaved for breath in the sparring ring, her whole chest rising and falling, the simple tunic she wore long discarded, leaving her simply in an undershirt that clung to her form, damp with sweat. She had her staff in her left hand, the one she didn’t use before. Her muscles trembled with exhaustion and her violet eyes blazed. 

“Again.” Issala snapped, tone cold, brooking no argument. 

“Surely this is enough, my lady.” Rylen too struggled to catch his breath. 

“Silence me.” Issala ordered tersely, attempting to twirl her staff with her left arm. She managed it, but only just. The movement looked jerky, no longer smooth and simple. 

“My lady I can’t…” Rylen pleaded, casting a horrified look to where Josephine stood her silent watch. Her heart stuttered and she stepped forward, clutching her writing board to her chest. 

“Issala, please…” Josephine heard her own words in the tense silence, but if Issala did, she paid them no mind. She had furious, fiery eyes only for Rylen. 

“If I can’t beat off a _damn_ silence I’m not ready to be out there and you know it.” Issala growled. “Do it. _Now_.” 

She wasn’t the Inquisitor anymore, but she’d given orders for so long nobody knew how not to obey them. Rylen released the silence and Issala countered it with a sharp twist of her staff. 

“Again.” She barked. 

“My lady…” 

“You’re holding back! _Again!”_

Josephine couldn’t look away. Issala slammed her staff against Rylen’s sword as he tried again to drain her of her magic. Rylen grunted, redistributing his weight on his back foot, ducking low under Issala’s form. She spun, still so beautifully graceful it made Josephine’s heart ache, to face him again. Her long, snow colored hair had come out of her braid, her face was twisted in a snarl.

She looked like Andraste herself come to wreck vengeance. Josephine felt the prickle of electricity across her skin, knew it was Issala calling her mana.

Until Rylen’s silence hit her square in the chest. Issala, too unused to fighting left handed, had left herself wide open, even Josephine could see it. Rylen stopped short, horrified, as their former Inquisitor collapsed in the ring, staff rolling to a stop feet away from her. 

Josephine dropped her board, the papers affixed to it, and moved. She’d never climbed into the ring before, her silk skirts caught on the ropes, snagging the delicate fabric. Only a part of her noted it, the rest of her was screaming, wailing, reaching with desperate fingers for Issala’s shaking shoulders. 

The moment Josephine’s fingers circled them, Issala flinched and tried to pull away, just as she had done every day since she’d woken. Every moment of their trip back to Skyhold. Every second insisting she did not need touched, she did not need comfort, she did not need _Josephine_ collapsed in the mud beside her. 

“I didn’t mean to my lady Montiliyet.” Rylen babbled, exhausted and frightened, accent thickening to near incomprehensible as Issala could do nothing but gasp for the breath his silence stole from her. “I didn’t…” 

“I know, Ser Rylen.” Somehow, Josephine’s voice still sounded remarkably composed, even as her own hands shook. “I know. Please retrieve a bottle of lyrium from the supply closet and bring it to my office.” 

That would fix her up. She’d been hit with a silence once before, in the field, and Josephine had read the report for days afterward. She’d agonized about every detail, asked a hundred questions as to where Blackwall had been, where Varric had stood, how Dorian could have _allowed_ her to be hit. 

But now Josephine had watched, helpless, as she faltered too. She instantly felt more charitable than she had then. 

“Can you stand?” Josephine inquired steadily. She waited until Issala nodded before she knelt from the muck, silk dress ruined. Rylen waited to assist with pulling Issala’s lanky form from the dirt, helped sling her over the ring where Josephine finished ripping her skirt. Issala made a small broken noise as they left a piece of silk hanging. 

“Leave it.” Josephine ordered, slinking Issala’s arm over her slender shoulders and pinning Rylen with a fierce glare of her own. “I can help her from here, thank you.” 

Rylen scrambled away and Josephine began the slow, awful process of lurching forward pinned under most of Issala’s exhausted weight. Issala made another half formed noise, a sound all desperate panic, trying to lurch away. Josephine looked up to see Issala staring, forlorn, at the staff in the ring. 

“Leave it.” Josephine ordered, more softly. “You do not need it right now, we are safe, I promise.” 

Issala shook her head, but was too weak to argue as Josephine steered her up the steps. Into the empty great hall that once rang with people. Josephine barely managed to get the door to her office open, staggered to the chair Issala preferred to occupy and deposited her clammy, shivering form there. 

Issala dropped her head, silently, into her remaining hand and stared down at the floor. Josephine watched her in the silence, as mute as she’d been made. “Why?” She finally asked, a strangled cry of anguish. “Why are you _doing_ this?” 

Issala couldn’t answer, but even if she could, Josephine didn’t think she would. Unfortunately, those words were like releasing cork from a bottle of champagne. The rest spilled out without her control. “I cannot _bear_ this. I cannot stand to see you… to see you throwing yourself against a wall every day as if _that_ would somehow make this better!” 

Issala ducked her head even further and Josephine dropped to her knees, staring up into her face. Tears sparkled in those exquisite eyes and Josephine felt them burn in her own throat. “Why will you not talk to me? Why do you _avoid_ me? Is it because I could not save the Inquisition? Are you furious? Do you no longer… do you wish…” 

Josephine couldn’t make herself say it. Issala closed her eyes and shook her head resolutely, tears sticking in her pale lashes. Josephine felt her own tears begin to trace down her cheeks. “Then why?” She demanded. 

Her lover opened her eyes, traced Josephine’s face with her eyes as tenderly as a caress. Then she frowned and looked down at her own broken body, the arm that was no longer, the one that betrayed her as thoroughly as everything else had. 

“I only want to have you.” The arm didn’t matter. The arm didn’t matter at all, only the pain and suffering it had put Issala through, only the way she resented it’s absence now. “I cannot bear to lose you. Please. Please don’t let me lose you.” 

Issala said nothing. She couldn’t. But Josephine knew words didn’t matter either. Instead she leaned forward and gently brushed her lips over the scarred flesh of her arm. Still beautiful, still elegant, just like her love.

Josephine felt Issala’s fingers brush, softly, against her cheek. Tears still shone in her eyes, but there was a tender, soft, almost shy smile on her lips. The same one she’d worn when they first met. Josephine leaned into the touch, looking up from where she knelt. “I love you.” 

And even though she couldn’t speak the words, the soft press of lips against hers gave Josephine the only answer she needed. 


End file.
